Dear Angel - Chapter 18

A/N: Happy Monday everybody! Hope everyone had a nice week-end. Just a little note that only 1-2 more chapters are left after this one. Time to end this baby. I think I'm going to cry! I fell in love with this fic from the moment I started writing it. And with all the reviews and comments that I've been getting, I think some of you also fell in love with Dear Angel and his anonymous lover. I would like to thank Jen (Rescuemama) once again for her amazing Beta services for this chapter. She really is a one of a kind lady and I love her to death! Love you Jen! Well...Here goes nothing... Here's part one of the Will/Sonny talk...Love you Angels - Roxy

(Will's POV)

I was looking out the window, watching the morning commuter as they made their way up and down the streets of Salem, when I heard someone walk into my office.

"Finally, Chad! It's about-" I started saying but stopped in my tracks when I saw that it wasn't Chad standing at the door. It was Sonny. "I have nothing to say to you," I fired at him as I circled around my desk, trying to put as much distance between us as possible.

"Will, can you please just listen to what I have to say?" But he didn't wait for me to answer before he walked into my office and closed the door shut. Sonny was looking a little more confident than when I had last seen him.

"Why should I Sonny? How do I know that what you say isn't just more lies?" My heart pounded rapidly inside my chest and my hands slowly closed into fists. I crouched forward over my desk and closed my eyes to try to calm myself down. But it wasn't working. The anger I felt towards Sonny for lying to me, for making me believe that he actually loved me and cared for me, was overtaking my body despite my best efforts to not let it show.

He didn't say anything. He kept his eyes locked on mine, holding us in an intense gaze.

"I think you should leave." I walked over to the door, and placed my right hand on the knob, turning it slightly, but it didn't move."What the-" I shook the door knob frantically, trying to get it to open, when I realized that the doors could be locked from both sides. "You locked us in here didn't you?" I spat at him. "Why are you still manipulating me to be with you?"

Sonny took a few steps back and his eyes closed tightly shut. "I didn't think that you'd talk to me otherwise."

"You're right about that! Son of a bitch!" I growled more at the unmoving door knob than at Sonny. "I can't believe you locked us in," and I started banging on the door. "Hey! We're locked in here! Came someone call the concierge to come let us out?" I screamed loudly, hoping that someone would walk by and come to my rescue.

"Will, no one's here."

"What do you mean, no one's here?" I narrowed my eyes at him.

"I called a meeting for the entire floor. Everyone's in the board room on the first floor."

"You planned this all out didn't you?"

"What other choice did I have, Will? I need to talk to you and this was the only way I could get you to listen to me," Sonny admitted.

"Just because I'm here with you doesn't meant I have to listen. Plus, Chad's meeting me to work on our presentation, so he should be here any minute. He'll get me out of here."

Sonny stalled and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Yeah, about that..." he paused and took a few more steps back. "Chad actually came by my office this morning and-"

"You're frickin kidding me!" I placed both my hands and my forehead on the door and closed my eyes. I felt defeated. Not only did my best friend betray me by going to see Sonny behind my back this morning, but he also had a lending hand in this whole orchestration. "I'm going to kill that asshole when I get out of here!" I mumbled bitterly to the door.

"Don't be angry at Chad for wanting to help you, or maybe I should say, help us..."

I turned around furiously and looked straight at Sonny, "I hate to break it to you, but there is no 'US'. You made sure of that by keeping this stupid anonymous thing a secret."

Sonny flinched as if he'd been slapped. "You're right...I made a mistake. All I'm asking is for a chance to explain to you my reasons for doing this. You don't have to say anything. All I'm asking is for you to listen..." Sonny took a step forward and pleaded with me, "Please, Will..."

I was backed into a corner with nowhere to run. And as much as I hated the idea of rehashing all of this again (since I just went through it with Chad), I knew it was better to get it over with once and for all. So I listened...

Walking away from Sonny towards the sofa, I gestured for him to follow. I got as comfortable as I could and looked back at him. "I'm listening," I breathed out reluctantly.

Sonny took a seat next to me, keeping a respectable distance between us. He looked at me and sighed, "I really have no idea where to start..."

"How about at the beginning?"

Sonny nodded, "Okay, Will. First of all, I just want you to know that I love you, and despite everything that's happened between us in the last twenty-four hours, that hasn't changed and is never going to. I love you, Will Horton. I've known that for months, and I'll never stop loving you."

Hearing Sonny say he loved me hurt more than I ever could have imagined. I closed my eyes and tried to hold back the tears from falling, "Sonny, please don't say that..."

Sonny nodded and continued, "I know that there's no excuse for what I've done. And you have every right to be angry at me for lying to you about the letters, but Will...you have to understand that I couldn't just come up to you and tell you who I was."

"Why not, Sonny? Why couldn't you have just told me how you really felt?"

"I was scared that when you found out who I was, you wouldn't feel the same way about me anymore," he shrugged and stared at the floor.

"So you decided to lie to me instead?" I retorted angrily.

Even though he was looking down, I could still see that Sonny's eyes where heavy with tears. I could see how hard this was for him to talk and it broke my heart to see him this way. I hated seeing him so defeated. It made me want nothing more than to leap forward, wrap my arms around him tightly, and tell him that everything was going to be okay. However, having to deal with fact that Sonny lied to me and remembering so clearly how hurt I was when I read his "coming out" letter, prevented me from doing just that.

"Do you remember when I stopped by your office on Tuesday?" Sonny started, "That was the first time I tried to tell you that I was your anonymous. I remember how disappointed you looked when you opened up the door and saw me standing there..."

Flash Back...

"What do you want?"

"I - I just wanted to see if maybe-"

"Look, I'm in a hurry and I don't have time for small talk. If you're looking for the proposal I'll have it to you by the end of the day, Now, if you excuse me, I have a meeting to attend."

End Of Flash Back...

"...and you just assumed that I was there to pick up the proposal. I didn't say anything; I just figured I'd go along with it, because at the time, it felt like the right thing to do."

"Yeah, I remember that day", I sadly admitted.

"After you left, I went back to my office and thought about everything that I wanted to say but couldn't get myself to tell you face to face. So instead, I put all of those feelings on paper. The letters had worked before, so I thought I could reach you again that way."

I felt bad after hearing that Sonny did try to talk to me. I was the one who brushed him off like that, like he meant nothing. "Sonny, I'm so sorry. I...I had no idea...I was so rude to you..."

Sonny smiled, "I know, Will. But it still doesn't change the fact that I could have tried harder."

"Yeah, you could have, Sonny. And you could have told me the truth a lot sooner and not carry on this charade, but you didn't do that either. Instead you chose to give up on me, on us..." I felt my lip quivering and I tried to keep my emotions in check.

"I trusted you, Sonny. I told you things that I've never told anyone before. I told you that I loved you, that I wanted to be with you, Sonny. You...", I tried to swallow them, to blink the emotions away. My eyes started to burn from holding back my tears, and I didn't know how much longer I could hold on before completely falling apart. The last thing I wanted was for Sonny to see me so fragile. I could be tough through this, I thought to myself.

"Will, all I ever wanted was to be with you, to love you. You left me breathless from the moment I saw you walk into that board room. You looked right at me with those gorgeous blue eyes and you smiled. God! I thought my heart was going to explode. All I could think about was how much I wanted to get to know you." He closed his eyes and a flood of warm drops started streaming down his cheeks.

"I didn't know," I whispered, shaking my head.

"How could you, Will?" He swiped at his face with his shirt sleeve. "And then I chose to deceive you by writing those letters as 'anonymous'."

"The letters were beautiful..."

"Thanks. I just shared how I felt, Will."

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe if you would've been honest with me from the beginning, I would have discovered much sooner that I shared those same feelings?"

"No."

"And did it occur to you that our relationship could never survive solely on letters? That you'd have to come clean at some point? Did you even think about the ramifications of your actions? Having me meet you on the roof top? Kissing me and then running away? Do you even know how much it hurt to have something so amazing slip through my fingers...and I couldn't do a damn thing about it? "

He didn't say anything back in return, but his tears continued to fall.

Despite my own frustrations, I struggled with the urge to comfort Sonny. He looked so sad and my heart hurt so much that I could've cried with him.

Deep down I knew that I was as much to blame for this messed up situation as he was. I couldn't just stand there and let him take all the blame. I kept asking myself over and over, "What could I have done differently?" The only answer that I could come up with is that maybe if I would have tried harder to be nice to Sonny, then maybe he wouldn't have felt the need to hide behind his letters and lie to me about who he was.

But what's done is done now, right? There's no going back...only moving forward. And that was the big question I needed to answer. Could I forgive all of this and move forward with Sonny?

My breathing became sporadic, and I could feel the walls of my throat closing in. Why was this happening to me? Why can't I ever find love in a simple, straightforward, not complicated way? And could I get over this drama and come out and tell him exactly what my heart has known - but my brain was unwilling to admit - from the very beginning? That I loved him and only him. Not the man behind the letters, but the man who stood here before me today. My Sonny...

I wished that I could have pushed my emotions away so the I could have forgotten about them completely, but I couldn't. So, I did the only thing that I could. I cried...